I have started to use Adobe Camera Raw. Although it has a number of advantages, it does have the distinct disadvantage of losing the excellent sharpening results produced by LinearSharpenMenu and LinearSharpen 3.42. I have developed an action set, ACR Menus, to work in conjunction with Camera Raw that extracts some of the components of the old LinearSharpenMenu and also incorporates noise reduction from Pekka Saarinen's LS D60 action.
It is intended that the user converts a raw file using suitable Camera Raw settings including some level of sharpening. The image will not be fully sharpened - this is done by using ACR menus. The converted image can then have custom edits, such as levels and curves, applied, if desired, before executing ACR Menus, which provides final sharpening and noise reduction.
The settings in the download version of ACR Menus are designed for use with the Canon EOS D30. Later in this article, I explain how you can modify these settings to suit different cameras.
Updates
1 Apr '03: A new version, 1.1, is available. There is only one change of any significance: a new level of sharpening - 6 - has been added. I have been experimenting with this action on images from my new 10D. It seems to work quite well, but sometimes these images can be take a little extra sharpening, hence, the modification.
I have tested the action with images converted using ACR, BreezeBrowser 2.6 and Canon's own File Viewer Utility. The results are all very acceptable with little sign of sharpening artefacts; the Silence Noise option seems to work very well.
There has also been a minor change to the levels command within the mask subroutine intended to increase the focus of the USM.
Structure and Operation
The structure of ACR Menus is based on the workflow menu principles used in LSM. There are fewer menus choices than in LSM (click to enlarge).
To use ACR Menus make one or more selection in each menu section by checking or unchecking the include/exclude statement box. This is the leftmost where you can see red and black check marks. A black check mark indicates the statement will be executed. A red check mark is only seen against an action name; it indicates that there is, at least, one checked statement in the action.
Sharpness Options
There are six options for sharpness starting at 0 (no sharpening at all) increasing to the highest level of sharpening, 6. The USM settings used in ACR Menus are much lower than in LSM; this is because I intend that a low level of sharpening is carried out in Camera Raw. I am currently using settings of 10 for both sharpening and smoothness in Camera Raw. Typically, I find that level 3 in ACR Menus gives a good result.
If you are processing a single image, then multiple levels of sharpness can be checked; a snapshot for each variation will be saved. For batch operation, you should select only one option.
Levels Options
There choices here are:
- Auto Contrast: Enhance Monochromatic Contrast
- Auto Blank & White: Find light and dark colours
Both these are available with or without gray snap — snapping to neutral mid-tones — and do no clipping of white or black.
Silence Noise
This is the equivalent of HQ Noise Reduction in LS D60. It will be included in all selected sharpness variations. This option does an excellent job of removing the "salt and pepper" noise in background, out-of-focus areas.
Use Antialiasing
This is the equivalent of Quality 3 in LSM. A stair interpolation upsize, followed by a downsize, smoothes the jaggies.
Starting the Action
One you have made all your selections, highlight "Go" and click the play selection video button, if you are working with a single image. If you are processing batch of files, use File>Automate>Batch.
Manual Options
If you are working with a single image, these additional actions may be helpful.
Add Silence
If you decided not to check "Silence Noise", you can treat the current image using this action.
Blanket Silence
This applies a very small, noise-reducing Gaussian blur.
Backup Snapshots
This is really intended to help try different treatments of the image. You can re-run ACR Menus on the same image; any existing snapshots will be overwritten. Backup snapshots creates a copy of the existing snapshots, so you can compare the effect of using the add silence or not at the same level of sharpness.
Customising The Sharpness Settings
The USM settings used in ACR Menus have been selected for use with images from the Canon D30. If you wish to use ACR Menus with different cameras, you will probably find that different USM settings are required. You will need to make changes in the ACR_Processes action set.
Open any image. It doesn't what because you won't save the changes.
Locate each of the individual actions Sharpness 1 to Sharpness. You will see there are two Unsharp Mask statements. The first statement is always higher and these settings are applies to the edges in the picture; the second statement with lower settings applies a more gentling sharpening over the entire image.
Highlight the first statement, and select "Record Again...". This will open the USM dialogue, enter the settings you wish to use instead. When you click OK, you will see that the action has been updated to reflect your new settings. Update the second sharpness statement as you wish.
Repeat the process for the remaining actions to customise ACR Menus for your camera.
You will need to experiment to determine good settings for your camera. I cannot offer any advice since I have little experience of images other than the D30.
Installation
ACR Menus is actually two action sets, ACR_Menus.atn and ACR_Processes.atn. Once you have downloaded the files, simply drag them from the download folder to the Photoshop desktop or select "load actions" from the Actions Palette dropdown menu.
Click on the link to download files: Zip V1.1